Always making
So much of all I do is mixed in with the culture of my surroundings. My neighborhood on the right day is so flavorful. The food smells are almost sexy. There is this food truck across the street from my studio and a Bodega next door. The languages dance across the streets at stop lights. I love how kind everyone is. It has this 8 fit feel to it from my big bay window. 
Being in search of others like you can be a pain in the ass. I’ve had my Youtube channel for around 6 years…but professionally around 3 years. In that time I have met ten People of Color who are also Youtubers. Some of them are overseas. Most are women. It has this oddly invisible feeling about seeing the smallness of our channels. I wish I knew better ways to reach out but in all honesty, I’m not sure how Youtube really works anymore. All the old tricks are being replaced. Metadata doesn’t change how you are searched for that much. People see you first and scroll the past. I’m tempted to change my name on Youtube to a cool nickname because I feel my name Jawara maybe subconsciously is a racist trigger. I think they see Jawara and think “not one of us.” I get a lot of people will not get that but a few of you who live with eyes wide know there are people in the world who make those choices about the people they surround themselves with. This year has been the year of People of Color dealing with a crippling amount of racism. Some outright and other casual. Casual racism is when someone says something racist but doesn’t think they are racist so it must be ok because it is meant as a joke. Most of the time I choose to let casual racism go because I can’t let my day be fucked up every day waiting in line at Starbucks hearing a loud phone call in line about something awful a person says about a race of people who they don’t think are in the room at the time.
Even if they are not around ….it’s still racist.
You can tell because the people in the room either say “that is racist” or the whole room looks away from you or last everyone shakes their heads looking at you. You might think this is them trying not to laugh with you but no… that is the “I hate having to deal with you” face. It feels like a prison sentence for life. If I react and speak up they provoke a response and then hide behind the protections of the law. Which they are most likely to win because the law is often not on the side of People of Color is history. Martin Luther King Jr. was thought of as an outlaw.
I make paintings. I am not a civil rights leader but I feel their word every day. They spoke those words so we could feel them … all of us.
Vamos pegar um cafe. (Let’s go get coffee). But if we do I need to listen and not spin your own narrative at us. This will never be your chance to teach us about how we live and what we feel. It is not a back and forth conversation. I’m teaching you first aid for People of Color.
be nice to each other
thanks
tchau
Jaws
Catching up is impossible.
I see all these great storytellers spinning webs. It is beautiful and I worry I’m more visual. So I make my films and my paintings. I hope they are fun or at least pulling you like Cthulu.I feel like causing madness could be fun at first but sucks as the decades go by. Not a great superpower for the long term.
So I have been making like crazy and dancing between art locations.
I am but a man with a brush.
I am but a man with a brush. I dream and sleep. I’m good at both if I may brag? A lot of that art comes from dreaming. The lucidity of waking up and running to a pen and paper is my shining achievement.
P.s.
Please go check out and support my Patreon. Lots of great gifts and prizes to be had and every little bit helps.
https://www.patreon.com/posts/just-for-you-8376249
I love all the making.
Also please go check out my Patreon. It has lots of fun ways and gifts to it. For $12 bucks a year you get a lot.
In my life, I have ignored a lot of life lessons people had given to me at first. As I have gotten older I have to know now to open my mind and ears. Not all voices are good advice from other people. Most advice is less about me than it is about people taking to themselves. Also, sadly lots of the advice people have given me would only work if I was a white dude. People don’t like to admit that what works for white dudes doesn’t work to strive in life for people of color. I’m pointing this out as Afro -Carribean-Latino man in Black history month who is 35. So I have lived for a bit and tried this advice many times and mostly failed. Not to say I have not had little victories. I’m here …doing all these paintings with all my fans worldwide but as look at Jean-Michael Basquiat and see his struggles as a man of color being a maker and I see parallels. I don’t want that life but I wonder how does a man of color makes it big in the art world other than to meet an icon and then climb to equality? Is that even equality? I say, Andy Warhol and people, nod their heads ad I say Basquiat and I get back blank faces. It is disheartening. I think of Baldwin who made it on his own and how much waring he had to do and all I think to do is prep myself for a fight to be heard and seen as an equal.
Bloody fists can be paintbrushes too.
It will be sad to see you go but staying and not seeing is worse.
I met great people…so many great people. I feel a new kind of inspiration. 
The best things come in the latest of night. It has this part to it that awakens in the moments when your brain yawns.
I remember painting like this when I was younger. These teeth and tongues were the mainstage a few times.
Finding focus in the new year.
I had to stop watching the news for a few days to find my focus. The newspaper I feel has more heart to it. Being able to put it to words has a strength to it, a passion. I remember being a kiddo and finding these “choose your adventure books” in the 80’s. After I would finish them, I would feel superpowered with creativity. I would draw all the things I had imagined, most had nothing to do with what I was reading. It’s funny to read a dictionary and imagine a new comic book. To see a new world inside and to be able to make it a real thing.
Once there was a boy and he loved paint. It was all his heart wanted and then he met people and he became a time painter.
jaws_blake 